when she called it in, she found out the pickup belonged to none other than Jim Farber, a local rancher.
Considering the fact that Farber hadn’t been seen since yesterday morning, the logical conclusion was that he was the lump on the front seat.
Callie wouldn’t know for certain until forensics did its thing, but she was a strong believer in Occam’s razor—that the simplest explanation was the most likely one. After seven years with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Department, working crimes a lot more complicated than this, she’d come to rely on that dictum as if it were gospel.
The question, as always, was who had done this and why? Williamson, Wyoming, wasn’t exactly known for its violent crime, and the handful of murders Callie had investigated in the course of her career usually led her straight to a member of the victim’s family.
That, however, didn’t seem to be the case here. Only careful examination would determine the actual cause of death, but whatever it might be, Callie couldn’t imagine Farber’s wife or either of their two kids pouring gasoline over the family truck and setting it on fire. This was a dispassionate crime, and the Farbers were anything but. It was certainly possible that Callie was wrong about that, but she didn’t think so.
A groan pulled her out of her thoughts. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” Rusty said, clutching his stomach, his face a couple shades whiter than it had been when they’d pulled up in their SUV a few moments ago.
Rusty Wilcox was a good number of years younger than Callie and hadn’t been on the job long enough to build immunity against sights like this. Even Callie was finding it more difficult than usual to shut her mind off to the horror of it all.
But she couldn’t let Rusty know this. She was his training deputy, breaking him into the cold, cruel reality of the sheriff’s Major Crimes Squad, and it was important to maintain her professionalism at all times.
This wasn’t much of a struggle for her, however. Over the years she’d learned to bottle up her emotions, a trait that had soured quite a few relationships.
The truth was, she was the dispassionate one. And at thirty-four, she had come to the conclusion that she was destined to spend the rest of her life flying solo. She no longer embraced the dream of a husband and kids and a white picket fence.
She looked at Rusty and could see that he was struggling to hold back the blueberry muffin he’d gobbled up on the ride over, despite her warning that what he was about to see wouldn’t be pretty.
“Do it on the other side of the road,” she said tersely. “You don’t want to contaminate the crime scene.”
As Rusty stumbled across the blacktop, Callie went back to her thoughts only to have them interrupted again by a shout from the far side of the pickup truck.
“Deputy Glass! I think I’ve found something.”
She glanced at Rusty, then moved around toward the source of the shout and found one of her crime scene techs crouched next to the passenger door—a grinning, gap-toothed kid named Tucker Davies.
Why did everyone around Callie seem to be getting younger these days?
“Check this out,” he said, excitement lighting his eyes as he pointed to a spot just under the truck.
Callie hunkered down and looked. Saw a lump of half-melted polymer that roughly formed the shape of a handgun. A forty caliber Glock from the looks of it. Just like the one she carried.
Callie immediately understood Tucker’s excitement. “Let’s just pray the serial number is intact.”
“Only one way to find out.”
Tucker reached a gloved hand under the truck and carefully picked up the weapon. He pulled it out, studied it, then showed Callie the trigger guard which looked relatively unscathed. “Only a partial, but it might be enough.”
This was turning out to be a good day for numbers. First the license tag, now this. And maybe the question of who and why would be answered much more quickly than Callie had dared hope.
“Let’s get it into the system as soon as possible. Hit every database you can think of. I want to know who owns that weapon.”
“Might take a while,” Tucker told her.
“Then I guess you’d better get started.”
WILLIAMSON COUNTY Sheriff’s Deputy Callie Glass was a Wyoming native, born and bred. She’d drawn her first breath on a cold Thursday morning in her mother’s bedroom. Her mother was eighteen years old and barely out of high school, screaming in agony as she pushed her first and only child into the world, then promptly passed on.
Some said that Callie’s mom might have survived if she’d been in a proper hospital and hadn’t been victim to an inexperienced midwife. But there was no way to know that for sure. The hemorrhaging had come on swift and without warning, and the poor girl was dead within minutes of the delivery. Besides, Mary Glass was a free spirit who had never trusted hospitals, and wouldn’t have poked so much as a toe inside one—even if her life had depended on it.
Callie’s father was a kid named Riley Pritchard, who had enlisted in the army a week after he’d found out young Mary was pregnant. The Pritchards were one of the richest families in Williamson, and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Riley’s father, Jonah, had nudged the boy into action, hoping to avoid the possibility of a bastard child claiming heir to their precious family fortune.
By the time Callie was born, Riley had been killed when a base supply struck overturned and crushed him, so the only parent she’d ever known was the woman she called Nana Jean.
Despite being widowed and borderline destitute, Nana had stepped up to the challenge of raising an infant and had done it without complaint.
Most of the time.
What few complaints Nana did have, came much later in Callie’s life, after a string of romantic disasters had made it clear that her granddaughter’s spirit wasn’t easily tamed, a trait she had inherited from her mother.
“I just wish you’d settle down,” the old woman often told Callie. “Find yourself somebody to share your life with. I won’t be around to hold your hand forever.”
But Callie was defiant. “Who says it needs holding?”
“Listen, child, you can be the most independent woman on the face of earth, but you still need a little romance in your life. It’s been far too long.”
“So why didn’t you ever get married again?”
“Your grandfather was one of a kind. Any man tried to replace him would only wind up heartbroken, and I’m not about to do that to someone.”
“He must’ve been pretty special.”
Nana nodded, a wistful look in her eyes. She’d never been a sentimental woman, so Callie knew that what she was about to say was sincere. “This’ll sound like a lie, but I swear to you that up until the day he died, my heart would flutter every time Walter walked into the room.”
Callie smiled. “That’s sweet.”
“Yes,
